Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Amy Levy
-
Standard Name: Levy, Amy
Birth Name: Amy Levy
Pseudonym: Melissa
Pseudonym: A Maiden Aunt
AL
was a precocious writer who died (in 1889) so young that all her work might in other circumstances be classed as juvenilia. She is a remarkable poet, melancholy but forceful and individual. Some of her short stories and essays, and one of her three novels, fall into her own categorization of pot-boilers; in others her artistic purpose is paramount. She was also a translator of German poetry. She is a writer of the urban and the modern, whose work is given extra interest by its sometimes painful engagement with her Jewish identity and with the position of Jews in the world of the English intelligentsia.
The epigraph, she said, came from an (unidentified) old English author.
Galbraith,. “Things Literary in London Gossip”. New York Times.
It reads (slightly differently rendered in different versions): And there was moche playe and entreplaye of musick, divers instrumentys makyng mynstralsy with eche other...
Friends, Associates
Vernon Lee
The young poet Amy Levy
was a guest at the Florence home of VL
; Levy was at once emotionally drawn to Lee.
Beckman, Linda Hunt. Amy Levy: Her Life and Letters. Ohio University Press.
119
Colby, Vineta. Vernon Lee: A Literary Biography. University of Virginia Press.
119
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Besides her friendship with Eleanor MarxCB
became close friends with Amy Levy
, whom she met in London in the late 1870s. She introduced Levy's work Xantippe to publishers.
Cameron, Mary. “Clementina Black: A Character Sketch”. The Young Woman, Vol.
One of her travelling companions (and a close friend) was the New Woman novelist Mona Caird
(famous for her declaration calling the institution of marriage a vexatious failure in the Westminster Review in 1888).
Thesing, William B., editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 199. Gale Research.
38
Friends, Associates
Beatrice Webb
Beatrice Potter (the future Beatrice Webb) became a friend of Amy Levy
during the 1880s through their shared use of the ladies' lunch room at the British Museum
, where a group developed of young...
She later felt she was lucky to be a postwar student; before then, she would have been as out of place at Newnham as Amy Levy
. Christianity was everywhere
Feinstein, Elaine. It Goes with the Territory. Alma.
37
in the syllabus and...
Education
Constance Garnett
Following her mother's death, Constance was sent to Brighton High School
, a boarding school where she was forced to sleep by herself since she refused to say prayers at night. There she continued studying...
Cultural formation
Vernon Lee
As early as 24 August 1887 VL
was calling Kit her new love, or new life (adapting the title of a poem which had been written for Lee by Amy Levy
).
Beckman, Linda Hunt. Amy Levy: Her Life and Letters. Ohio University Press.